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GM friend of mine ran a three-hour one-shot allowing playtest classes.
Level 4, free archetype, ancestral paragon, lump sum starting gear. Set in a pirate town working for the city guard.
Characters:
Captain Ishkur, skeleton catfolk Commander with Viking archetype.
Human Swashbuckler (Wit) with Marshall archetype.
Poppet Druid (Untamed) garden gnome with Beastmaster for a lawn flamingo (terror bird) animal companion.
Build details:
Skeleton heritage canceled out heavy armor penalty (but just used this to free the general feat for a thematic Breath Control instead of Fleet). Skeleton feat gave the collapse reaction to negate a crit by falling apart. Viking dedication allowed moving freely through water and the archetype gave Reactive Shield (which got a ton of use).
Wielding bastard sword and a steel shield.
Play notes:
GM mistakenly treated all failed Recall Knowledge checks as critical failures.
Class Feats:
Combat Assessment
Adaptive Stratagem
Set-Up Strike
Tactics:
Mountaineering Training
Naval Training
Form Up
Strike Hard
First Combat: two lower-level enemies (ice/water creatures) with late third enemy (misty creature) arrival
First round: Go last, move up to flank, Set-Up Strike to help the lawn flamingo (hit, Combat Assessment to get info on the low-level enemy, crit knowledge to know the icicle ranged attack we saw and a wave attack, plus bonus knowledge that they have two forms.
Mist creature shows up. Flat miss checks start happening, but nobody rolls below 6.
Off-guard set-up results in a crit for the bird.
Second round:
Viking archetype reactive shield blocks an attack.
Set-Up Strike against remaining low-level enemy, miss, second strike hits and kills. Form Up! moves allies into position, using bonus reaction for animal companion.
Third round:
Enemy moves out of flank.
Swashbuckler disincentivized from using One for All.
Move up, combat assessment hit, second attack crit to end the fight.
Second combat: False priest, two low-level mooks who are effectively turned into barbarians, a plot-summoned living waterfall, and a late-arrival tentacled fish that starts flooding the room.
First round: Druid delays to after Ishkur for the movement help.
Water elemental moves up, blocking door, making it irrelevant.
Ishkur hits with Set-Up Strike, and uses Strike Hard to let the Swashbuckler crit. (It doesn't do much without panache.)
Druid has flamingo awkwardly move up to attack around a corner.
Swashbuckler uses Inspiring Marshal stance, an action to get panache, and hits with unbalancing finisher.
Ishkur hit with ranged attack. Reactive Shield isn't enough to stop it.
Ishkur is crit by the water elemental and critically restrained as an engulf. Both manipulate and verbal commands are off the table due to engulf/restrained. Fails both escape attempts fail even with a hero point, and fails a knowledge check on how to help the escape, but can't communicate the false info to anyone.
The flamingo shreds the water elemental, freeing Ishkur. The GM generously ignores the medicine/undead restriction, and Ishkur gets an assurance'd battle medicine for eight health.
Ishkur moves to flank with the swashbuckler, uses Form Up to move the Druid out of the way and the flamingo into attack position. The swashbuckler already riposte'd.
Fish moves up and crits Ishkur, who collapses as a reaction to make it a regular attack.
Thanks to the repositioning, the bird is able to crit both low-level raging enemies and the Druid can electric arc the fish and surviving rager.
Swashbuckler takes out the remaining rager with a nonlethal punch-crit.
Ishkur stands, repositions everyone again for flanking with the bird, and crits on Combat Assessment attack against the tentacle fish, using Sailing Lore.
Ishkur goes down to a crit by the fish. No more collapse trick, and the shield reaction isn't enough to drop it to a hit. The room is filling up with water thanks to the weird fish.
The Swashbuckler is off dealing with the false priest.
The druid takes a turn to move over and draw Ishkur's oil of unlife for "his skin condition".
The fish and bird fight it out, with the fish tripping the bird and taking out most of its health.
Ishkur drops to dying 3.
The druid heals Ishkur to consciousness and acid arrows the fish. The flamingo attacks it with its one action, popping it with an explosion that drops most of the party to a sliver of health.
Ishkur gets up, moves to get the banner in range of everyone (helped due to Viking free movement in water). We realize belatedly that the bird is prone and couldn't actually move. It's weird that the command doesn't allow standing, but probably balanced.
The movement lets the swashbuckler head off the fleeing false priest, and kill him with a confident finisher.
The druid medicines people, and Ishkur uses his remaining salves to top up to full.
Third fight: Ore louse hiding in the closet that would have potentially been involved in the last fight.
Swashbuckler sets up.
Ore louse misses Ishkur.
Ishkur moves over, brings everyone in with Form Up, hits with Combat Assessment.
Druid uses Fear. It makes the flamingo's attack a crit for lethal damage.
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Overall results:
Ishkur critically succeeded a knowledge check, and failed all three others. Since the GM mistakenly gave false info, that would have been an issue, but the questions Warfare Lore could ask weren't very useful. "Weakest save" wouldn't matter, because the Druid only had Electric Arc and Fear, the only special attack we could have done something about was the fish exploding, and the Swashbuckler always tries reasoning regardless. Defenses (weaknesses and resistances) should probably be included, even if it overlaps with Thaumaturge.
Rolling Warfare Lore for initiative was nice, and having a few questions I could ask with good modifiers felt much better, even though the rolls didn't back that up. Combat Assessment necessary for feeling like a knowledge class, and did more work than Rapid Assessment. I would not want to play this class at level 1 or 2.
The number of known tactics is too small. I had two for thematic and out-of-combat use, meaning there was no combat variation. Being able to swap at combat start meant that anything that showed up late wasn't relevant, and judgement calls had to be made before any knowledge checks were rolled.
MVPs of the game were Drilled Reactions and Form Up working together to basically turn the bird (who had the best damage in the party) into a three-action character. Swashbuckler's many reactions occasionally competed, and the bird got default priority because it had fewer actions that were more powerful. The ability to move into position, let everybody else move (providing flanking) and then strike was great. The party greatly appreciated the movement, especially the Druid for their animal companion. It regularly allowed an extra secondary attack or cantrip. Against stationary, tough enemies, Strike Hard was a solid fallback once everybody was set up and movement no longer helped the situation.
Heavy armor for strength focus and a d8 weapon meant that Ishkur was on par with the bird and the Swashbuckler when they had panache. (Poor swashbuckler.) With no martials with a damage boost (Swashbuckler just makes up for being Dex-based) or above a d8 in the party, Strike Hard was only worth it once (although on a normal restrained grapple, would have been useful then too as a verbal command).
External reactions were very important to the playthrough. Melee Commander does not have the actions free to raise a shield, basically ever. The class might benefit from a flourish action to raise a shield while issuing a command? The wording on that might be tricky.
A party of three plus an animal companion was just enough. If it were just a party of three, the class would have felt like a terrible drag.
I don't think I would play Commander without taking Form Up. It's the most useful and versatile option. Getting a full stride off-turn at low levels is big. Pincer Attack or the other free-action movement options would never have done the job, and steps would have been shut down in the second half of the second fight anyway.